Socks

People take socks for granted. They put them on in the morning, send them down the laundry chute at night, and store clean socks out of sight in the sock drawer. But what is like to be a sock? Do socks have hopes and dreams? Do they experience joy or sadness? Are they content with their lot or do they live on the verge of rebellion? There exist, alas, neither sock autobiographies nor discourses on sock philosophy, and a sock Shakespeare has yet to be born. To know socks, one must imagine their material and mental world as best one can, thinking as socks think, seeing life as socks might see it. Reader, I have done this necessary work for you, and I will gladly share what I have learned so that you may better understand socks and accord them the respect they deserve.

Socks, like identical twins, come in pairs. They were made alongside one another, they spend most of their time together, they walk together, and they dwell together in sock drawers. Some socks, such as a pair with distinct left and right foot markings, are fraternal twins. Because they are kin, sock pairs observe the incest taboo and generally avoid carnal knowledge of each other. It is rumored that gay socks of different lineages, or even distant cousin socks, may engage in hanky-panky whilst in the drawer. And there are surely occasional instances of incest and other forms of sexual abuse. Socks are only human.

Although socks are mute, they feel an intense connection with one another, both with socks from their own family and those from other lineages. The stark reality of sock existence, however, is that socks are sold to households without regard to family ties, and individual socks are sometimes separated from their twins. One sock goes into the washing machine and its mate languishes in a dark corner of the laundry room or is kicked under the dryer. A tourist hastily packing leaves one of a pair under the bed, while another falls out of luggage under the not-so-watchful eye of the TSA inspector. Socks are left behind in high school gymnasiums, swimming pool locker rooms, and campgrounds. Loss and loneliness are thus constant elements in the sock world. To be a sock is to fear abandonment and suffer the loss of companionship of one’s fellow socks. To be an abandoned sock is to suffer in silence, to imagine uttering a plaintive cry for rescue without the necessary means to do so.

From their arrival in the household onwards, socks reside in separate drawers for girl socks and boy socks. Whether in the drawer or on someone’s feet, socks are rarely encountered in mixed sex groups. The sexes may mingle in the laundry basket, the washer, or the dryer, where perhaps they have one or two-day flings. But those settings are scarcely conducive to longer and deeper relationships. The sexual lives of socks thus very much resemble those of the Shaker communities of the nineteenth century. One imagines them rejoicing as they are tossed about in the laundry, just as the Shakers enjoyed vigorous dancing. But new socks, like new Shakers, must come from outside: they are made, or recruited, not born.

Socks aspire, and they dream. Conservative socks worn with business attire strive to keep themselves free of wrinkles to reflect their owner’s sobriety and integrity. Christmas socks, gay socks, brightly colored socks, designer socks, intricately knitted socks all strive to be seen. They hope their owners will let their trousers rise enough to display them proudly. Sad white tube socks worn by elderly men in gaudily colored athletic shoes are defiantly proud of their owners’ cluelessness. The same is true of black socks worn with sandals. Soft Marino wool socks dream of being caressed lovingly by a beautiful woman before she dons them. And every sock no doubt dreams of being the sock that Harry Potter tricked the evil Lucius Malfoy into giving to the house elf Dobby, thus freeing him from servitude. Such dreams are doubtless implanted into sock DNA at the very moment of creation.

The life of socks is not an easy one. They spend long hours, even days, weeks, or years cooped up in dark drawers. Whether neatly stacked or tossed in at random, there is almost nothing they can do to escape the boredom of confinement, the strictures of the sock incest taboo, or the disapproving looks of sock homophobes. When liberated from their imprisonment they are transferred to feet and are then literally trod upon. Some of those feet are washed and dainty and have trimmed and smooth nails. Others are bigger than the sock can comfortably fit, or they stink, or they have ferocious big toes, or they are crammed into shoes that are too small. Many socks, therefore, are abused, and subjectively feel worn down by their owners. Not surprisingly, resentment runs deep in the psyches of these socks, and some of them sadly respond by encouraging those rough and ragged big toes to have their way with them. Seeking a hole in a sock toe is the sock equivalent of suicide by cop, for there is hope that once discarded a sock may be free of suffering, or able to make a new life in some other less exploitative role. Perhaps the sock hopes to find renewed purpose as a dust cloth, or even a sock puppet. Such hopes are often forlorn, for a discarded sock is more likely to be merely tossed in the trash, with or without its twin. The death of a sock is little noted by the human world; nonetheless, attention must be paid.

No matter how expensive or artfully decorated, socks are thus inherently tragic figures in the world of human clothing. They share material and status interests, of course, with underclothes, which are themselves subject to abuse and exploitation, and made to absorb unpleasant bodily fluids or perform feats of engineering for which they are ill equipped. But false consciousness reigns amongst colorful socks, just as it does for frilly feminine panties, underwired bras, or men’s boxer briefs designed to package masculine equipment. In the social hierarchy of garments, those worn underneath other garments are lower in rank, and like underclasses everywhere they are tempted or, more accurately, encouraged to vie with one another for scraps of human approval. And there are hierarchies within these untouchable clothing categories: Dainty, colorful panties feel themselves better than grandmother panties, sleek boxer shorts lord it over tightey-whiteys, and natural figure bras sneer at their heavily padded sisters. Support socks take pride in their medical function and wool socks in fighting cold, and both look condescendingly at the obscurity of tiny ankle socks.

The world of socks is thus in many ways a sad reflection of the human world that uses them. Humans have manufactured for socks a web of inequalities and traditional enmities that mirrors their own. One may hope, as either a human or a sock, that somehow these inhumane but all-too-human abuses and injustices may someday be overcome. The revolution will be televised if it occurs, but don’t set your DVR just yet. Just pull up your socks and carry on.

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